China, US talk about stabilizing relations after Antony Blinken and Xi Jinping meet

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday (19) that the United States and China had made “progress” towards resuming relations, as both agreed on the need to “stabilize” bilateral talks. between the two superpowers.

After two days of meetings in Beijing with senior US officials, including President Xi Jinping, the top US diplomat reaffirmed that there were crucial issues between the nations that remained unresolved. But he said he was “hopeful and looking forward to re-establishing better communications and achieving better engagement in the future.”

Blinken is the first US Secretary of State to visit beijing in five years, and his talks with Chinese top brass were seen as a litmus test to ease the persistent distrust between the two governments.

“It was clear that the relationship was at a tipping point,” Blinken said at a press conference in the Chinese capital on Monday. “And both sides recognized the need to work to stabilize it.”

“I came to Beijing to strengthen high-level channels of communication, to clarify our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we can work together on our interests, align ourselves on shared transnational challenges,” said Blinken. “We’re not going to succeed on every issue between us in one day, but in a variety of areas, under the terms we set out for this trip, we’ve made progress and are moving forward. However, I want to emphasize once again that none of this is resolved with a visit, a trip, a conversation. It’s a process,” he pointed out.

One of the key unresolved issues was the restoration of military communications between the US and China. Contacts between the country’s top military officials remain frozen, and two recent incidents have raised concerns that the already strained relationship could deteriorate.

China recently rejected a meeting between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who is under US government sanction, in Singapore, although the two spoke briefly.

Blinken said that while he had raised the need to have such communication channels “repeatedly” in his meetings, there was “no immediate progress”.

“At this time, China has not agreed to go ahead with this. I think this is an issue that we have to keep working on. It is very important that we restore these channels, ”she opined.

The US Secretary of State said his talks touched on the war in Ukraine and North Korea, and that he raised US concerns, “shared by a growing number of countries, about the provocative actions (by the People’s Republic of China) in the Strait. of Taiwan, as well as in the South and East China Seas”. He further said that the US position on Taiwan has not changed and pressed China on human rights.

In his meetings with senior Chinese officials, Blinken has also repeatedly noted that he has sought to clarify the US economic position vis-à-vis China and emphasize that the US is not trying to “contain” China economically. “There is a profound difference for the United States, and for many other countries, between ‘decreasing the risk’ and ‘decoupling,’” she noted.

“We seek to reduce risk and diversify. That means investing in our own capabilities and safe and resilient supply chains, seeking a level playing field for our workers and our companies, defending our country against harmful business practices, and protecting our critical technologies from being used against us. ”, he enumerated.

Blinken said China had assured the US and other countries that it would not provide Russia with lethal aid and had seen “no evidence to contradict that”, noting that China’s speech was in line with statements made in recent weeks.

“What we are continually concerned about, however, are Chinese companies that may be providing technology that Russia can use to advance its aggression in Ukraine. We ask the Chinese government to be very vigilant on this point,” added Blinken.

The US secretary said he addressed human rights at the meetings, including human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. He also said he addressed the situation of “illegally detained US citizens and those facing exit bans” from China.

On areas of potential cooperation, the top US diplomat said the two sides “agreed to explore creating a working group so we can shut down the flow of precursor chemicals” for fentanyl. China is one of the main producers of these products which are used to produce the highly deadly synthetic drug that claimed the lives of thousands in North America.

high risk encounter

The US Secretary of State described his conversations with Chinese officials Wang Yi and Qin Gang as “sincere, substantive and constructive”, and said his meeting with China’s president was “important”.

However, the meeting was not publicly confirmed until shortly before it took place. The uncertainty over whether Xi and Blinken will meet during the two-day visit has further highlighted the complicated US-China relations. A failure to schedule a face-to-face meeting would have been seen by Washington as a slight, breaking with a series of previous visits by leading US diplomats.

The meeting, which ultimately took place in Beijing’s imposing Great Hall of the People, was only publicly announced by the US about an hour before it started. It lasted about half an hour, starting at 4:34 pm local time and ending at 5:09 pm, according to a State Department official.

“The world needs a stable and global Sino-US relationship, and China and the United States being able to get along has an influence on the future and destiny of mankind,” Xi told Blinken, according to a Chinese reading of the meeting.

“China respects the interests of the United States and will not challenge or replace the United States. Likewise, the United States must also respect China and not harm China’s legitimate rights and interests,” Xi added. The statement said Xi told Blinken that the world needs stable relations between China and the US and that the future of humanity depends on the two getting along well.

The two global powers have been increasingly at odds over a range of issues ranging from Beijing’s close ties with Moscow to US efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.

At the beginning of the year, a chinese surveillance balloon it was detected floating by the US and hovering over sensitive military sites before finally being shot down by an American fighter jet. The case further complicated relations and resulted in Blinken canceling a previous visit to Beijing.

This time, the diplomatic mission advanced.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Beijing, China, June 18. / Leah Millis/Reuters

“A choice must be made”

A nearly three-hour meeting between Blinken and Wang on Monday morning highlighted the profound challenges in overcoming distrust and friction in that relationship.

The growing influence of the Chinese government internationally and the increasingly authoritarian controls in the country have led the US to reformulate the way it manages its relations with power in recent years.

Echoing typical Beijing rhetoric, Wang blamed Washington’s “misperception” of China as the “root cause” of the decline in the two sides’ relations and demanded that the US stop “suppressing” China’s technological development and fueling “the threat from China,” according to a reading by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

“We must reverse the downward spiral of China-US relations, promote a return to a healthy and stable path, and together find the right way for China and the United States to coexist in the new era,” Wang said. For him, Blinken’s visit came at “a critical juncture in US-China relations, where a choice needs to be made between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict”.

Wang also reiterated that Taiwan it is one of China’s “main interests”, on which “it has no room for agreement or retreat”.

The self-governing democratic island, which the Chinese Communist Party claims but has never controlled, has increasingly been a hot spot in the US-China relationship.

Overall, Wang’s comments were more combative in tone than those of Chinese Foreign Minister Qin, who met with Blinken the day before. Qin said both sides agreed to “promote dialogue, exchange and cooperation” and “maintain high-level interactions”, according to a Chinese government reading.

Blinken’s Sunday meeting with Qin, which lasted more than five hours and then ended with a working dinner, resulted in progress “on several fronts”, with both sides showing a “desire to reduce tensions”, a senior official said. State Department official told reporters on Sunday.

“Profound differences” between the US and China, however, were also clear during the meeting, the official added.

Although Qin holds the post of foreign minister, he wields less power than Wang, who directs the country’s foreign policy through his position at the party’s central leadership.

Blinken’s originally scheduled visit in early February was arranged as a follow-up to a friendly face-to-face meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.

The meeting – the first in-person meeting between the two leaders as presidents – was seen as a crucial step towards restoring certain lines of communication. Last year, the Chinese government had cut relations following a visit by then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.

Both the US and China had downplayed the possibilities of a breakthrough during Blinken’s visit.

Ahead of the meeting, the US government has been careful to manage expectations, with a senior State Department official last week telling reporters he doesn’t expect “a long list of results”.

Meanwhile, both sides are also navigating how the meetings play out for their respective national audiences.

In the US, how to strongly fight China has become the subject of heated political debate. Some lawmakers have criticized the Biden administration for talking to China.

China regards Washington as an actor that has been actively trying to thwart its development, and it is also very aware that the US is heading into a presidential election cycle where anti-China rhetoric could intensify further.

His officials also meet with Blinken in an environment where state media and China’s official rhetoric have long portrayed the US government as a bad-faith actor responsible for destabilizing ties.

Philip Wang, Nectar Gan, Mengchen Zhang and Martha Zhou of CNN contributed to the report.